What do the devs want from SMN?

I am curious what SE/Devs want from the smn job? While being a range caster are we to fill the slots with bard/mch while having lower dps but offering utility? Are we suppose to be aoe specialization casters? Dot Mages? I just find atm its almost like I am suffering an identity crisis playing the job. Are the job/game developers even aware of its current state?

I think their main focus was to transition Summoner from a sustained DPS playstyle to a more burst heavy class. However, a lot of it was kinda half-assed because you can't just delete the pets or the Dots (well, not all of them at least lol). It's also a bit undertuned atm, but once they fix the numbers that'll be the general idea. I always jump to the top of the dps list once I get bahamut out, but then fall back whenever he goes away.

Also, Garuda applies a magical resistance debuff on the enemy, and ifrit a physical resistance debuff. There's also devotion, which I also think is clunky and undertuned atm, but they still clearly want this to be a pet class, which sorta runs contrary to the newer burst style they are trying to go for. Maybe they're trying out some sort of hybrid and seeing where that goes. I don't like the playstyle, but I don't hate it either. I still play it though because I love bahamut.

I feel like the general idea is that it's meant to be a tricky class that builds up to huge numbers if the player is on their game, IE, keep Bahamut-egi out as much as possible. That's a fun style on paper, but right now SMN's numbers don't really reflect how otherwise punishing the job is.

I think the current difficulty curve verses other DPS is hurting the job, as well, and being linked to SCH has borked some early skills. Also, the inability to really heal the pet is a joke. Fix that SE.

I think with SB SE kinda tried to give the players what they were asking for:

"players: give us bigger egis" > "devs: here take Bahamut himself" > "players: I can't see mechanics, make it smaller" > "Devs: ..."
"players: smn is not a dot class" > "devs: here you are down to 2 dots which are super easy to keep up" > "players: where are my dots?" > "devs: ..."
"players: let's have the egi buff the party" > "devs: devotion, contagion, radiant shield" > "players: not like this" > "devs: ..."

I guess at this point they don't really know anymore what to do with SMN. I'm not surprised the job doesn't work well

There's been a million of these threads, use the search function and stop making more.

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Originally Posted by Starkbeaumont

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You summed it up. Community feedback resulted in a confusion of differing ideas on what to do with the class. Particularly on the stark difference before and after SB on egi sizes.

There are really only 2 things I want from the Devs for SMN:
1) Bring sustain back. This feedback is at least clear cut and overwhelming.
2) Figure out the jobs identity, create and share a plan with the community on how it will be achieved, and stick bloody to it.

Bahamut is the one redeeming quality of SMN. Never make it smaller. Just add an option for other people to make it not show for them.

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Originally Posted by Starkbeaumont

I think with SB SE kinda tried to give the players what they were asking for:

"players: give us bigger egis" > "devs: here take Bahamut himself" > "players: I can't see mechanics, make it smaller" > "Devs: ..."
"players: smn is not a dot class" > "devs: here you are down to 2 dots which are super easy to keep up" > "players: where are my dots?" > "devs: ..."
"players: let's have the egi buff the party" > "devs: devotion, contagion, radiant shield" > "players: not like this" > "devs: ..."

I guess at this point they don't really know anymore what to do with SMN. I'm not surprised the job doesn't work well

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Alternate version, the way I see it:

"players: give us bigger egis" > "devs: here take Bahamut himself" > "players: Great, but why is he glued to my shoulder when he has a 100y range?" > "devs: ..."
"players: smn is not a dot class" > "devs: here you are down to 2 dots which are super easy to keep up" > "players: Great, what do I do with all this spare time between trances now?" > "devs: ..."
"players: let's have the egi buff the party" > "devs: devotion, contagion, radiant shield" > "players: That's a good idea, but it doesn't work unless the pet actually does what I tell it to do when I tell it to do it, this cannot work without a fix for pet responsiveness, oh and the targeting system on Devotion is asinine" > "devs: ..."

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Originally Posted by Starkbeaumont

I think with SB SE kinda tried to give the players what they were asking for:

"players: give us bigger egis" > "devs: here take Bahamut himself" > "players: I can't see mechanics, make it smaller" > "Devs: ..."
"players: smn is not a dot class" > "devs: here you are down to 2 dots which are super easy to keep up" > "players: where are my dots?" > "devs: ..."
"players: let's have the egi buff the party" > "devs: devotion, contagion, radiant shield" > "players: not like this" > "devs: ..."

I guess at this point they don't really know anymore what to do with SMN. I'm not surprised the job doesn't work well

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It's like when you go to, say... a pizza place and say you want a pizza, they bring the pizza dough half baked and with only tomato sauce on top, technically it is a pizza.
But then you complain that it wasn't as it was advertised, so they take your pizza and put very few bits of the topping you said you wanted on top.
Then you complain that your pizza, that you are paying the full price, the same price as everyone else in the same establishment payed, does not really meet up to the price asked, meanwhile the pizza the other tables ordered are much better.
So they take your pizza, and put a giant as piece of the topping you wanted on top of it, but the dough is still half cooked and they removed all other toppings they had added before.

Anyway, if there is something I learned working in a marketing agency is, the customer always knows what they want, but they dont know how they want it.

They should indeed give better and cooler egis to smns, but they should also foresee the visibility issues, BUT, to be fair... after a while I never had any issues with mechanics because of it, nor the other people in the party, actually, they had a much bigger issue with drg's tether than bahamut.... *on v3s*
While moving away smns from being a dot class for the majority of its damage, they didnt actually move any of that damage they should be doing to anywhere, so, while they have less dots, the damage is also less because that damage from the dots is nowhere to be found.
The buffs added/changed while somewhat a step in the right direction, it was the step a drunk old man after hours of nothing but drinking trying to walk in a straight line, but a step nonetheless. contagion being stuck in an unresponsive pet with its duration being so limited and precise, radiant shield that still doesnt make it worth picking ifrit in most situations *nor its damage*. and devotion that picks someone by proximity for some reason while the schs can target their pets tether.

in short, while they should listen to the players, they should also think of ways of actually doing it the right way. And if they are having a hard time,a testing server would help on it... or at the very least, just making a thread on the forums, and asking for input. If someone is there just to troll, just ban the person.

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Originally Posted by TripPsyc

What do the devs want from SMN?

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That they quit :p
On a more serious note, doesn't he bring a debuff that lower magic resistant of 10% with Garuda ? No bad when you have casters in your group

Summoner? I thought it was Bahamut Mage.

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Originally Posted by Starkbeaumont

I think with SB SE kinda tried to give the players what they were asking for:

"players: give us bigger egis" > "devs: here take Bahamut himself" > "players: I can't see mechanics, make it smaller" > "Devs: ..."
"players: smn is not a dot class" > "devs: here you are down to 2 dots which are super easy to keep up" > "players: where are my dots?" > "devs: ..."
"players: let's have the egi buff the party" > "devs: devotion, contagion, radiant shield" > "players: not like this" > "devs: ..."

I guess at this point they don't really know anymore what to do with SMN. I'm not surprised the job doesn't work well

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I get frustrated at posts like this, because of how deliberately misleading they are in the attempt to defend the devs. They don't have any context, and don't acknowledge which complaints come from largely OUTSIDE the SMN community (Bahamut size), nor do they highlight the various ways in which feedback has been implemented POORLY (Devotion being as clunky as it is - I don't see anyone complain about Contagion or Shield as they're kind of impossible to screw up re: their use).

For instance, your second point. Putting aside the fact that there are different SMNs that like different aspects of the job, your point is incorrect anyway because the devs didn't REMOVE SMN's DoT-reliant playstyle, they just arbitrarily reduced the number of DoTs we have. Theres a huge difference in the feedback that was conveyed there and what was actually implemented. People who dislike SMN's DoT focus didn't want to have to "worry about less DoTs", they didn't want to be using them at all, instead focusing on either building a gauge to summon flashy summons for burst damage or a full pet-based job in which most of the rotation revolved around commanding and buffing the Egis.

Also, let's not be facetious here in regards to your first point: there's a big difference between a realistic moveable/placeable Ifrit model about 3/4th the players' size (using Hyur as the average metric here) and Demi-Bahamut, a non-controllable static entity that stays right next to the SMN no matter what, with a wingspan that could cover an entire raid group. Demi-Bahamut is about 2x the player model side of a Hyur and his wings are pretty ridiculous because they basically down scaled and retextured the Bahamut Prime boss model without thinking about how it would work in a gameplay context. In this case IMO there was absolutely nothing wrong with players' requests because the implementation was so bad, but note that even then most of the people who complained in the big thread about it were non-SMN mains (I'd hazard SMN mains were more used to him).

I'm not even sure where you got the third point, tbh. Wanting pet utility isn't bad per se, but what I saw mostly was that players wanted a reason to choose something other than Garuda in 99% of content, because old Contagion was just too good compared to anything else. I feel like the devs have delivered on that in Stormblood, except I still maintain that Titan-Egi needs to be an AoE pet or something because tank pets in a game where everything meaningful is done with a full trinity group anyway is just too niche.

tl;dr context is important, don't just handwave an entire jobs' problems as being the result of conflicting player feedback when in reality it's up to the developers to parse the chaff from the wheat as it were and come up with a healthy, reasonable vision for the job. Are we DoT mages? A pet class? A burst class? Pick a lane and stick with it SE, because your multiple personality disorder when it comes to this job is frankly making it unenjoyable to play (to ME, in case that wasn't obvious).

That's what happens when you try to add dots, pets, direct damage and heavy burst into a single class.

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Originally Posted by loreleidiangelo

tl;dr context is important, don't just handwave an entire jobs' problems as being the result of conflicting player feedback when in reality it's up to the developers to parse the chaff from the wheat as it were and come up with a healthy, reasonable vision for the job. Are we DoT mages? A pet class? A burst class? Pick a lane and stick with it SE, because your multiple personality disorder when it comes to this job is frankly making it unenjoyable to play (to ME, in case that wasn't obvious).

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Although I definitely agree with this, you still have to admit that devs are getting feedback from players that could result in a circumstance like this. Even Yoshi admitted Machinist to be in the same boat as well, caught in an identity crisis because of different viewpoints on what the job should be. On the other hand though, if devs never used feedback from players, then Paladin probably wouldn't have that extra damage and Bard might still be "the bow mage".

For now (a.k.a. maybe 4.1), devs could still tweak Summoner a bit to at least make it competitive, and maybe SMN players will get used to the playstyle in due time. Over the next couple of years though, devs will hopefully have all the time they need until 5.0 to figure out just what they want Summoner to be as a job and focus more on that one element rather than trying to please everyone all the time.

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Originally Posted by loreleidiangelo

I get frustrated at posts like this, because of how deliberately misleading they are in the attempt to defend the devs.

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not defending the Devs at all. Just saying that they addressed some of the points of the community and yet it's not really working out.

at this point they could take away DoTs altogether (or just keep tridisaster) and make the rotation more engaging. it's ridiculous that smn is still casting Ruin I so often even at lv70. Not even going to talk about the RNG aspect of Ruin IV.

They want SMNs to equip those RDM soul crystals.

Here's some delicious verkoolaid.

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Originally Posted by Zigabar

Here's some delicious verkoolaid.

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That joke is getting ver-y overused.

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Originally Posted by Starkbeaumont

not defending the Devs at all. Just saying that they addressed some of the points of the community and yet it's not really working out.

at this point they could take away DoTs altogether (or just keep tridisaster) and make the rotation more engaging. it's ridiculous that smn is still casting Ruin I so often even at lv70. Not even going to talk about the RNG aspect of Ruin IV.

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Fair enough; I admit my accusation was unjustified. Sorry.

That said, while I've never liked the whole "DoTs and Aetherflow" concept for Summoner, I actually admit that in 2.x I never had many grievances with the job's performance or playstyle until Heavensward. I didn't like "Summoner" being a DoT mage, but it was consistent and was more creative than the rotation-based DPS we mostly had in ARR (it just felt more like a Necromancer than a Summoner IMO). I feel like the devs have since TRIED to make it more "like a Summoner", but they've done so without removing the Affliction Warlock copy concepts that frustrated people during 2.0 (ACN remnants like DoTs and Ruin spam), and the resulting hybrid has just made no one happy.

I just want my 3.0 smn back.
It was fluid, it was nice and it was amazing. Ty, yw.

It's a pet job and SE has put a lot more "weight" on pets now than previous versions. They are required to buff, debuff, and proc ruin now. They also account for 1/3 of the SMN's dps.

If some people were so concerned about their dots and others that the job doesn't feel like summoner at all then the best solution could've been to rename the dot job as (Insert a Name Here) Mage (like Void Mage, for example) and postpone SMN for 5.0 as an entirely new job with it's own assets and not related to Arcanist. This wouldn't discard SMN from the game (just postponed) and Dot Job would still exist for people that like it as it was.

Right now for me SMN is a mess and aside from some tweaks to improve damage, that's the class we'll have to work with till 5.0, sadly. I envy people that like it because I can't like it all and I was a huge fan of it in 3.x :(