I actually enjoy SMN.

Surely, I'm not alone on this?

While yes, I'm a newbie. I didn't play SMN at level cap prior to 4.0 and yes i haven't really made into difficult content yet.

The multiple phases, the flashy spells, the lore.

I love it.

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Originally Posted by Dohmi-Zeiva

Surely, I'm not alone on this?

While yes, I'm a newbie. I didn't play SMN at level cap prior to 4.0 and yes i haven't really made into difficult content yet.

The multiple phases, the flashy spells, the lore.

I love it.

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You're not alone, but many are upset with some of the decisions made. Many of which simply don't make sense. Personally, even in its current state summoner is the only job other than Astrologian that doesn't bore me to death after a few minutes. Yes, even Samurai bores me...it's just so easy for so much reward.

With Summoner I have to decide the right time to use my skills so i'm not left without options later on. The gameplay is still engaging. Astrologian is the same due to the card system. I feel like other jobs could benefit from this kind of engagement.

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Originally Posted by Dohmi-Zeiva

Surely, I'm not alone on this?

While yes, I'm a newbie. I didn't play SMN at level cap prior to 4.0 and yes i haven't really made into difficult content yet.

The multiple phases, the flashy spells, the lore.

I love it.

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Your mostly alone, mainly because you lack the knowledge to have an informed opinion on the state of summoners.

Scummoner feels underwhelming. I feel more impact on BLM and RDM. Scummoner has no oooomph to it and I always feel like falling asleep. You can have a decent AoE burst sure but there is so much buildup to it that I can either no skill RDM something or feel the power as a BLM.

Bahamut should be stronger for what it is. It should hit twice as hard as a Deathflare being a lvl 70 skill compared to a lvl 60.

Really disappointed.

I haven't played for a bit after I hit 70, but no you're not alone. I think it needs a buff, but it's still more fun than BLM will ever be. I've always liked the managing aspect of the class and how you could just all at once unload everything. The other casters just have nothing comparable to the feel of that. Sitting and casting for me has always been the most boring way to play so naturally I like the classes with more mobility. For me fun factor SMN > RDM > BLM. But again i've been on a hiatus from the game for a while, been playing other things.

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Originally Posted by Mnemosynia

Your mostly alone, mainly because you lack the knowledge to have an informed opinion on the state of summoners.

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O. I understand the point youre making. Who has the knowledge? The 1%ers?.

Just fyi. Im not new to mmos. Though im not a theorycrafter i do make a point to become acquainted with a classes functions and mechanics.

Anyone who maxed out and got good with SMN in 3.x

I'll explain.
You did not experience the no cd shadowflare that made our aoe great.
You did not experience the use of sustain on titan-egi while leveling and doing fates making your life easier.
You did not experience bane being able to spread your dots basically everywhere.
You did not experience contagion being way more responsive when you use it.
You did not experience ruin 3 before ruination and it being used out of dreadwyrm when you become good at managing mana.
You did not experience using Bio 1 2 and 3 then using bane.
You did not experience using miasma 2 in pvp or in pve.
You did not experience titan-egi actually being used for something.
You did not experience the power of being the only class that could res people outside of healers. (although this is a selfish one)

There are many things and nuiances about summoner you just do not know, I am not blaming you and you maybe a good player but you cannot understand how to older players feel unless you actually played it.

Guess what? I am an older summoner (since 2.0 to be clear) and i enjoy this cls now even more so please dont speak for us elder ones in general. In my opinion it's exactly what Troile said - making decisions in those 4 phases of our prio-system is a complete different feeling than just spreading dots or following a strict rota - enjoying something is not only based on dmg output, at least not for me. I also like that smn always shifts their playstyle with every major update instead of just getting 1-2 other dmg skills on top of their straight toolkit. So no Dohmi there are still people like Troile, Val and me who feel like you - we might be less but we still exist ^^

There are just a few things that really became the deal breaker for me with SMN.

- Loss of sustain means that RDM with Vercure is now much better at soloing than SMN . I liked the survivability of SMN with Titan. Now Titan is useless.
- Ruin 3 nerf. This is supposed to be our hard-hitting spell, now it just feels bad. I see the high potency attacks of other jobs and SMN just lacks any feeling of impact except for deathflare.
- Bane nerf - this was a key ability and now it is useless in pretty much every conceivable situation.

Ultimately, my issue isn't the damage, its how the job just doesn't feel as much fun to play now. Other jobs were just better designed this xpac.

From a longtime SMN since 2.0, you're far from alone. Pay no mind to the posers who hopped on the bandwagon in 3.x because a forum full of bean-counters deemed it "useful" for raiding.

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Originally Posted by Mnemosynia

Your mostly alone, mainly because you lack the knowledge to have an informed opinion on the state of summoners.

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Must be my lack of knowledge too, cos I actually enjoy playing SMN and don't really care about most of 'bad stuff' that you listed in your next post. Yes, I used to play SMN both in 2.x and 3.x eras, but i still don't really miss anything SMN lost, because it's not like this job didn't get anything in return and every other job lost something too for the sake of progress.

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Originally Posted by fumofu

Must be my lack of knowledge too, cos I actually enjoy playing SMN and don't really care about most of 'bad stuff' that you listed in your next post. Yes, I used to play SMN both in 2.x and 3.x eras, but i still don't really miss anything SMN lost, because it's not like this job didn't get anything in return and every other job lost something too for the sake of progress.

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You quoted my post nicely, and my operative word was Mostly there are exceptions to all rules, and i would say the majority of SMN are unhappy, DRK with out a doubt the DRK community is dissatisfied with the class there are people who enjoy the changes, but most players do not and you can see it you browse the forums or goto reddit or any other community site, even the japanese are disliking these changes.

Interesting thoughts. I did, albeit for a short time,experience most of what you listed.

I guess the short lived time of 3.0 didnt leave me nostalgic. I'll never know.

Anywho. Thanks for your words.

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Originally Posted by Mnemosynia

Snip

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Nailed it. I loved Summoner so much that I didn't even get a chance to level Black Mage to 60 by the time I quit shortly after HW release. It's crazy how much is gone after a 2 year break. I remember the good old days of SMN FCOB strains and pushing DPS while having MP issues, then 3.0 gracing us with amazing buffs and new skills.

New Summoner makes me sad. The class felt great before Stormblood now it's all clunky and meh.

I start the game with summoner 2013 and it is still my main. Have liked playing it in every expansion.

Summoner is fun to play. However its heavily punished for mistakes and timings, thats the only issue i have with it. They set out to make the skill cap lower for new players to get into the game. I'll argue that the diffrence between a good summoners and a bad summoners are even larger now than it was before.

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Originally Posted by MagiusNecros

Scummoner

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This is not BnS :P

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Originally Posted by Mnemosynia

You quoted my post nicely, and my operative word was Mostly there are exceptions to all rules, and i would say the majority of SMN are unhappy

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and I would say the majority of smn you are talking about were just winning team joiners at HW. Though the ones who played it before it became that powerful with HW were used to be "weak" and "broke" before and don't care about the complains which fill ups the forums nowadays.

those who like the lore and everything around it - I think there are more than enough but less will post here to avoid complainers discussions.

Truthfully, I think Summoner feels better in PvP than it does in PvE. And what I mean by that is the way the abilities are used in that environment. Rather than casting Ruin as a filler spell, Ruin III is used which is both strong and visually interesting. Then during Dreadwyrm Trance, Ruin IV is spammed rather than being locked behind a random proc. In addition, only a single use of Deathflare is needed to summon Bahamut, thus summoned twice as frequently, but with only one use Ahk Morn once rather than two. Less burst when Bahamut is out, but more consistent sustained damage with a satisfying flow.

Yeah pvp is really, really nice indeed. I would love to see the pve gameplay like that... although I'm not sure if it would be to powerful for grp comps in raids... - but yeah it feels fluffy and flowing there way better thats true ^^

I actually agree with you I like the new SMN because of its challenge in optimization, though I admit that during my more tired evenings, I choose to play the easier RDM instead.

You're not alone at all.

BUT I also feel our numbers are not enough. If FFLogs shows that SMN performance in Primals Ex are statistically poor, this indicates SMN will just be a fun-to-play job but not something to bring seriously to end-game content.

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Originally Posted by aldoteng

I actually agree with you I like the new SMN because of its challenge in optimization, though I admit that during my more tired evenings, I choose to play the easier RDM instead.

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I enjoyed leveling SMN to 70 and was considering maining it for a while, but I think it's too much of a pain to optimise right now. I feel like I need to be working double as hard and I'll still get out-DPS'd by RDMs. And looking at the optimal SMN rotation, including stuff like waiting half a second between abilities to maximise Bahamut's moves, I'm pretty sure SE didn't even plan SMN to be played like it should be played for best performance... Makes me think SE doesn't really think through their job design decisions.

I'm glad to see some people enjoying summoner with the changes.I so far have been toggling between fun and "I'll just play something else"

On the one hand I enjoy the party buffing a lot. I like the radiant shield and the cogitation switch. I enjoy having Apocatastasis at my disposal.

I feel my biggest adjustment was going from not being able to apply as many DoTs around (Constant Shadow Flare / Miasma II) especially in lower level dungeons where we have more than just 3 mobs running about at times. So the lack of AoE there in some places hurts. I think that's more of a QoL change SE needs to apply to the lower dungeons though.

Also being so Ruin focused, and the random Ruin IV is a bit new to me. I enjoy the potency increase to Ruin, but I don't see the reason for the lowering on Ruin III.

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Originally Posted by Mnemosynia

You did not experience the use of sustain on titan-egi while leveling and doing fates making your life easier.
You did not experience titan-egi actually being used for something.

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That's another thing. Titan Egi needs some love, whether it's make him into a nice lil nugget tank again or adjust him so he's doing something in battle for us.

The Sustain removal is another thing I'm not 100% understanding. It's been very useful for content. It wasn't a 100% thing but in past dungeons and trials where party wide damage was a bigger thing, it added up. In solo content sure miss it.

I'd still like the knock back removed from Shockwave, I use it only on certain mobs now if I remember it doesn't knock them back. But the downside is that it makes Garuda go in for the kill. Still, I guess it's not too hard to hit Heel. Maybe it's my 3.0 mindset being stubborn on some things.

I can't wait to get to 70 though, and mess around with a full summon that everyone pleaded oh so much for.

I still like smn in 4.0. Just need to make it so you don't lose dreadwyrm aether when you die.

Also would be nice if you aetherflow skills is unusable if it will have no effect to minimize wasting a stack and losing 1minute of dps

As a levelling SMN my biggest issue is with our inability to effectively heal Titan-egi or my other pets. I am really hoping they switch Physic to Int at a minimum.

Also, I notice that Garuda is almost always dying on boss fights in the HW dungeons.She needs to take less damage from AOE.

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Originally Posted by Mnemosynia

You quoted my post nicely, and my operative word was Mostly there are exceptions to all rules, and i would say the majority of SMN are unhappy, DRK with out a doubt the DRK community is dissatisfied with the class there are people who enjoy the changes, but most players do not and you can see it you browse the forums or goto reddit or any other community site, even the japanese are disliking these changes.

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While this may be the case for those that openly voice their opinion, you can't account for the vast majority of players that don't post on the forums or Reddit.

SMN right now just feels very dull and monotonous. We coax a steady stream of negligible damage out as we build to our burn phases, but even those don't feel exciting.

And for whatever reason, our chocobos don't heal summons, so soloing is painful compared to my other jobs.

Im glad someone enjoys the class. Been playing it since 2.0 loved it than and tham hated it since 3.0. Too many buttons and the pacing is wonky especially if you miss a bane or fester your down for 60 seconds. Not impressed with the bahamut gimic. Clicking ahk morn should feel radical and awesome but its not .it just inches at the health bar like every other spell and is completely overshadowed by healer aoes in dungeoms which is ironic in its own sense. Class is overaly complicated which I had hoped stormblood fixed with there less buttons campaign .Egis die much easier and titan can't hold his own in solo content anymore without a heal. The whole thing is a complete mess and i think newer players dont understand this plight if they never experianced the job when it was actually fun. No relevance

A lot of QOL issues are what prevents me from enjoying it. Animation delay, lack of pet responsiveness (paired with the dependence on increase of pet management, aka the hot piece of Mess that is devotion)and the snooze fest of ruin filler kills a lot of the fun for me. I'm not one to be swayed by pretty visual bandaids. The class feels clunky but in a semi fixable way. Still don't think it'all ever achieve the smooth flow that it has in 3.0 without making major changes to the core concept but it could get close if the devs make the right changes. Then again we might have to wait till 4.4 before we see them...

I've been a SMN main and purist since 2.0 beta (all other jobs just seem kinda boring to me) and personally in terms of job identity I think SMN is in a great place!

I agree that there are some kinks that need to be worked out with the current changes. The biggest one for me is the lack of being able to heal our Egi. But other than that and one or two QoL changes, I think the 4.0 changes are a blessing to SMN! I see people complaining about Bane being nerfed as well as other DoT based changes. However I'd like to take a moment to point out my Demi-Bahamut crits for over 20k most of the time with a single Akh Morn, and if you are a capable SMN you can execute TWO Akh Morn's with in Bahamut's 20 second window. So don't tell me SMN has lost it's dps output because that simply isn't true!

For the most part all the 4.0 changes have done, is refocus SMN's dps output into Bahamut (and rightly so) Don't forget we're playing a SUMMONER here people! Of course the job's main dps output should come from Summons. That is the entire nature and identity of the job!

SMN does great dps on a dummy, but boss mechanics means that you have to delay Bahamut (losing time on building future Bahamuts) or risk getting stunned/phased/moved during Bahamut.

Add that to the fact that SMN's dps utility doesn't fit in the physical meta (BRD/NIN + SAM or MNK), while Red Mage's dps utility does fit and does all of SMN's other utility better, while not being affected by boss mechanics as much.

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Originally Posted by Sacerdos

SMN does great dps on a dummy, but boss mechanics means that you have to delay Bahamut (losing time on building future Bahamuts) or risk getting stunned/phased/moved during Bahamut.

Add that to the fact that SMN's dps utility doesn't fit in the physical meta (BRD/NIN + SAM or MNK), while Red Mage's dps utility does fit and does all of SMN's other utility better, while not being affected by boss mechanics as much.

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I agree in terms of SMN's new utility, it doesn't seem to add all that much. But then again, most utility in this game adds little benefit due to the rudimentary and linear game play. I do however like the changes to Radiant Shield, and the fact Ifrit is a very viable Egi now to use anywhere. Including raiding. So the balancing of Egi viability was definitely a needed change. However I've never had to delay any of my Demi-Bahamut's so far due to mechanics. I always get those two Akh Morns off, each and every time. (Unless of course it's a situation where the boss leaves the arena temporarily, like the final boss in Kugane Castle).

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Originally Posted by SoloWingMetatron

I agree in terms of SMN's new utility, it doesn't seem to add all that much. But then again, most utility in this game adds little benefit due to the rudimentary and linear game play. I do however like the changes to Radiant Shield, and the fact Ifrit is a very viable Egi now to use anywhere. Including raiding. So the balancing of Egi viability was definitely a needed change. However I've never had to delay any of my Demi-Bahamut's so far due to mechanics. I always get those two Akh Morns off, each and every time. (Unless of course it's a situation where the boss leaves the arena temporarily, like the final boss in Kugane Castle).

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Ifrit is arguably the only pet you would ever want to use now. It's same as heavensward, just reversed. Contagion used to extend your dots to last longer increasing them by a total of 560 potency. With Contagion being so short (It doesn't even last as long as dreadwyrm or bahamut...) and Only being 10% potency increase, You'll be lucky if you get 200 Potency increase out of it. Assuming Radiant Shield lasts 24 seconds, that's 300 potency, plus the boost to melee dps. Radiant Shield also works great for Aoe Damage, as long as multiple adds are hitting whoever has radiant shield on. Ifrit also has Auto attacks that have a 15% chance to proc ruin 4. He hits more often, meaning you have more chances it procs.

Contagion and Radiant Shield are still weak though. Foe Req can last around 25-33 Seconds with refresh and is 3% damage increase to everything. Hyper charge is 5% damage increase to everything, Lasts 30 seconds, Won't even mention Balance, and Trick attack is 10% damage increase for 10 seconds. Embolden by itself is stronger buff and better utility then anything Summoner has.