SMN: why developers hate SMN so much?

To me it’s actually crazy how much job has changed. From being top 3 dps in Shadowbringers to being the worst dps in Dawntrail.
In 6.0 we got full rework (we never asked for) that made it worst caster but easy caster (we never asked for). I understand developers wanted to have easy job for new people and stuff but why did they decided to ruin one of the best dps.
I played SMN all through Endwalker hoping that they would buff it or change it. But it never happened. Now in Dawntrail this job is worse than ever. I would never imagine before that phys dps would be better than a caster.
The last thing was when on media tour they give us great potency numbers and I thought it’s finally better future for SMN but on release of course it was nerfed to the ground again…
So now I’m realizing that I will have to play the worst dps for 2 years again? I know someone would say I can play another dps. But why would I? I played this job for so long, and I played this job when it was the best job and I still have a hope for it to be better.

So please before 7.05 consider this job carefully.
Thanks!

Bc this is what the devs want SMN to be. The smn we used to have prior to EW was a mess by their standards and didn't "feel" true to a SMN from FF history.

But also they spent an entire expansion (ShB) nerfing it because of how broken strong it was. I suppose it's a nightmare to balance in their eyes.

They likely wanted a fresh canva.

balance team lazy.. they have every excuse to dumb jobs.. if raise is bad for the job.. just remove it

or make it if u use raise you will get debuff if u don't use it you will keep your damage as other DPS

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Originally Posted by Sugarboo

To me it’s actually crazy how much job has changed. From being top 3 dps in Shadowbringers to being the worst dps in Dawntrail.
In 6.0 we got full rework (we never asked for) that made it worst caster but easy caster (we never asked for). I understand developers wanted to have easy job for new people and stuff but why did they decided to ruin one of the best dps.
I played SMN all through Endwalker hoping that they would buff it or change it. But it never happened. Now in Dawntrail this job is worse than ever. I would never imagine before that phys dps would be better than a caster.
The last thing was when on media tour they give us great potency numbers and I thought it’s finally better future for SMN but on release of course it was nerfed to the ground again…
So now I’m realizing that I will have to play the worst dps for 2 years again? I know someone would say I can play another dps. But why would I? I played this job for so long, and I played this job when it was the best job and I still have a hope for it to be better.

So please before 7.05 consider this job carefully.
Thanks!

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Last expansion, I was really angry and disappointed.
Both because I had high expectations of the new smn (which I expected to be consistent with the optimization that the old one required), and because when it arrived and how much it sucked, there was no longer any valid alternative.
In this expansion they brought out the PCT, which in terms of imagination you may or may not like, but in feeling it is the one that comes closest to what I imagined the new SMN would be.
I'm still angry, because we didn't get the smn we deserved, the long-time smn players got their asses kicked by the designers and devs, but the pct is giving me hope that maybe, if they work hard, they can pull something good out.

I would like to add that that's right that it sucks a lot in dps output. As far as I'm concerned it shouldn't even be able to be brought into hard contents, in its current state.

Summoner has a history of broken design. It got thunder 1 removed from cross class skills, completely broke their statistics with heavensward buff stacking. Stormblood is a masterclass in how not to design a class while also being the first time we saw the potential for a real summoner class. No, really, they took Dragoon's dragon sight tether and literally gave it to the pet, except it leashed onto the nearest ally which could be a tank, a healer, or the lowest DPS person on your team. But not yourself, and you had no real control over it. Then there's the whole 11 wyrmwaves rotation where you could cast addle to get more wyrmwaves when you were intended to explicitly get only 8 of them.

Endwalker took their pet action queue system and made it extremely easy to accidentally break it. Running the same rotation you could have the pet finish all queued actions over 5 GCDs apart. As in a rotation that ended on the 7th GCD into the fight could finish all pet actions on the 8th GCD or the 12th GCD and you had little actual control over it.

At this point players were split into 2 camps. Those who loved its warlock-esque playstyle from the early game, which didn't work well as seen with HW summoner and snapshot abuse. And those that saw the demi-summons and went: "Can this just be the class please?" The class at this point outside of pet jank was mostly a class of texture differences. How it played in DWT and DB had a different texture to post-DB, where FBT/DP had a very different feel due to rotation, and the back half also rolled differently.

The devs then took the texturing of the old rotation but simplified it a tiny bit more, most notably with FBT no longer being a 1-2-1-2-1-2-1-2 rotation and now just 1-1-1-1-1-1, took feedback of: "We like the instant casts of summoner," but forgot that summoner was still more a turret caster than a mobile caster and basically pivoted it from turret caster into rphys with some casts, and then started designing every fight like cast bars didn't exist.

A combination of all these changes led to summoner being absurdly popular. As in, I don't think any class was more popular save maybe WHM or WAR, and it dominated all of EW as the most popular class outright, and you can see why the devs are hesitant to change it. This ignores any contributing factors like casters in general being suffering in EW and the overall war being waged by encounter designers on the turret caster playstyle itself, but seeing as the devs are continuing to wage war on turret casters, there's no desire to change smn because it was the most popular DPS class outright. And it wasn't even close.

This is an extremely brief history of SMN and glosses over a lot, but we got here because of bad design decisions compounding until they hit a breaking point, and then the devs messed up when listening to feedback and also messed up encounter design. So summoner is likely the future of all casters.

i like the newer SMN depite the old rotation being fun also, but issue with SMN is they want to be a support role now it seems, ok fine, but the supporting we do now is weird, feel much lesser than bard or dancer. so my question to the dev is, what is summoner?

New summoner cannot be doing Picto/Black mage damage quite frankly, New summoner is designed to be a very forgiving entry job with a lot of uptime without having to worry about casts for the most part, also having rez & great healing utility compared to its counterparts, Even red mage who brings veraise/duel cast, struggles a lot more at positioning around harder fights.

If summoner wants to see higher potencies they need to make it actually cast more and not have raise, It's genuinely not fair on the other casters if Summoner could do the same damage as others casters which is the issue with designing a high movement job in the caster category.

I think the job personally needs another rework or at least some changes and added casts. (also rez should be a caster role action that is locked behind a long timer).

I honestly think this is partially because of the pandemic. I think they decided they were doing a full rework for EW, and wanted something that was akin to “traditional summoner”. But they also wanted to keep the mobility of the preEW days.

I think they ran out of time and resources and so we ended up with the EW iteration. They said it was a base, but truthfully I can’t really see how they can build on it other than maybe adding Ramuh, Shiva, and Leviathan, and having them be slightly different than Garuda, Ifrit, and Titan.

My guess is there will be another fairly major rework for 8.0.

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Originally Posted by anna-steele

i like the newer SMN depite the old rotation being fun also, but issue with SMN is they want to be a support role now it seems, ok fine, but the supporting we do now is weird, feel much lesser than bard or dancer. so my question to the dev is, what is summoner?

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It doesn't really read as a Support job. Seeing its animations especially as another player you see it as a DPS even if a lot of its moves have support options, RDM reads far better as the support caster because of the big shield vercure and mass res also the damage buff is more noticeable. Personally I don't think its a good way to go for SMN to become a support, RDM will always be superior to it. Genuinely think this version of SMN is compatible with a dot system, maybe not like damage dots but weakness dots like RPR's weakness dot but make SMN have mutiple that relate to buffing the summon's damage and convert some of the spells during summon phase as commands/abilities. But yeah I don't think the support option works, I think something akin to a Demonology Warlock from wow would work better for new SMN.

I just wanna know why they spent the effort to rebuild the job to a classic FF image just to completely botch the vibe on it the next expansion. A lot of people bailed off of it due to that.

Of all the history of summons and how they fit into this game, from Shvia to Leviathan to Ramuh to maybe Alexander for the FF9 theme going on in DT.

But no, lets do Bahamut yet again and lets do the worst take on Bahamut in FF history. The only thing that would drive more people off of SMN is if Smile played when you Summoned the new Bahamut.

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Originally Posted by Ramiee

It doesn't really read as a Support job. Seeing its animations especially as another player you see it as a DPS even if a lot of its moves have support options, RDM reads far better as the support caster because of the big shield vercure and mass res also the damage buff is more noticeable. Personally I don't think its a good way to go for SMN to become a support, RDM will always be superior to it. Genuinely think this version of SMN is compatible with a dot system, maybe not like damage dots but weakness dots like RPR's weakness dot but make SMN have mutiple that relate to buffing the summon's damage and convert some of the spells during summon phase as commands/abilities. But yeah I don't think the support option works, I think something akin to a Demonology Warlock from wow would work better for new SMN.

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Personally I’d Summoner’s versatility/utility as a caster has practically always been its defining feature compared to Black Mage, even going back to 2.0 with things like Eye for an Eye / Shadow Flare / Virus. They just decided that they’d represent that going forward with ‘trololol lock it all behind a Demi’ instead of actually giving it something interesting or exciting lol. I think Summoner could easily lean towards being a ‘support caster’ that differentiates itself with more convoluted utility than Red Mage. Like the difference between healing as a WHM or a SCH lol.

Like, I always thought a 30/60 second cool-down single buff ability that changes depending on which Egi phase you’re on would be something make Egis more of a decision and not just ‘do I want to spam jump while attacking or do I want to pretend I’m a real caster lol’.

And I mean, isn’t Summoner in the same position as Bard? It can’t have high dps like Black Mage and Pictomancer, it can’t have support like Red Mage. So what does it get? Middling dps and some ‘meh’ support that doesn’t make much difference (excluding Raise mostly but the value of that is also highly situational)

Not saying they should go all-in on making it support, but I definitely think it’s always been an aspect of the job so I’d hate to see them throw it away

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Originally Posted by Mapleine

I just wanna know why they spent the effort to rebuild the job to a classic FF image just to completely botch the vibe on it the next expansion. A lot of people bailed off of it due to that.

Of all the history of summons and how they fit into this game, from Shvia to Leviathan to Ramuh to maybe Alexander for the FF9 theme going on in DT.

But no, lets do Bahamut yet again and lets do the worst take on Bahamut in FF history. The only thing that would drive more people off of SMN is if Smile played when you Summoned the new Bahamut.

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Honestly, if they did Solar Bahamut BUT after Solar Bahamut you got Shiva, Leviathan, and Ramuh, then they would be cooking.

But then again, I guess the devs don't want to put too much work into summoner, even if it's just adding fancy new skills that are essentially just reskins of existing skills

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Originally Posted by Dogempire

Honestly, if they did Solar Bahamut BUT after Solar Bahamut you got Shiva, Leviathan, and Ramuh, then they would be cooking.

But then again, I guess the devs don't want to put too much work into summoner, even if it's just adding fancy new skills that are essentially just reskins of existing skills

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this is my take too, even if they cant think what to do with smn, at the very least a cosmetic upgrade (with potential upgrade obviously) is already better than nothing, just change ifrit, titan and garuda with shiva leviathan and ramuh, even if it same skill, even the animation uprade alone will make us happy somewhat

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Originally Posted by Connor

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I always saw SMN support to be on the level of melee DPS like MNK. I don't really think anyone would ever call MNK a support role though.
If they want SMN to be a support caster they need better reading animations IMO and something that makes their support engaging.
I think their current support is fine maybe remove the heal from solar bahamut since phoenix exists.
Personally I find PCT to have much better utility then SMN so I believe the only real reason it doesn't do much damage is because CBU3 thinks it's too easy to do good damage.

The new egi-system can't be a decision based thing because of how it's designed, it's burst oriented so there's always going to be an optimal rotation under raid buffs. That's why I think the only way it can be fixed is having something outside of it to manage like weakness dots. It's like how PCTs muses are balanced because you have to prepare them so they aren't brainless to use, but with SMN it's literally all prepared in one Demi-Summon.

I wouldn't really compare SMN to BRD because SMN is in a much better place than it, all of the Phys range have been really bad since SHB but EW BRD is insanely punishing for no payoff. At least SMN is easy for it's middling damage.
I also don't want it to lose raidbuffs or it's regen from phoenix, I just think the idea of it becoming a support caster is stupid imo. Give it RPR/MNK levels of support.

The problem with the rework of the Summoner is that it was poorly designed, which is an undeniable fact.
To save development resources, they completely removed the usefulness of Carbuncle.

They kept the Aetherflow system, which does not fit at all with the new design.

Instead of providing tools to move when it's really necessary, like the old Summoner's "Trance of Bahamut," Egi-Assault x4, 4 stacks of Ruin IV, and Demi-Phoenix, they gave us a Summoner in the caster category that struggles to identify with the category.
The developers don't really know where to place it—whether it's a ranged physical DPS or a caster.

I'm sorry, but no matter how accessible the job is, the Summoner alone breaks the balance of the category.
For example, the Pictomancer has the perfect kit; with its basic combos, it can accumulate 5 stacks of free mobility or have a dash to move when it's really necessary.

The Summoner has superfluous mobility.

The only danger is the use of Ifrit, but all the demi-summons are copied and pasted from one another,
ifrit is the only summon with any identity.

Everyone swiftcasts Garuda, and most of the time it's not difficult to leave the DOT zone under the bosses.
Titan is just no-brain and is the best elemental summon in the kit, ahead of Garuda and Ifrit, even though it requires the least effort.

They had a usable foundation provided it was properly reworked.

They could have removed the extremely long elemental summon GCDs or made them OGCDs and allowed weaving with an instant spell like the old Ruin II or IV.
They should have made the demi-summons different, as there’s no reason for them to be copies of each other.

The Summoner should be one of the classes with the most diversity in its kit; each summon and demi-summon should be a sort of mini-game.

Summoners should have had a new resource system, but the job designers were excessively lazy and lacked originality.
In terms of originality and etineration, it’s absolutely the worst design possible—the current Summoner.

I honestly think they can't design a job worse than the Summoner.

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Originally Posted by Dogempire

Honestly, if they did Solar Bahamut BUT after Solar Bahamut you got Shiva, Leviathan, and Ramuh, then they would be cooking.

But then again, I guess the devs don't want to put too much work into summoner, even if it's just adding fancy new skills that are essentially just reskins of existing skills

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This is my biggest disappointment… I like new SMN but I want the other 3 elemental primals as gem summons. If they separate all 6 into astral and umbral teams, even better. It feels weird getting another Demi when the rotation in-between hasn’t been changed.

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Originally Posted by Sugarboo

SMN: why developers hate SMN so much?

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Assume facts not in evidence.

People pretend like SMN was the most popular class in the game before the rework, but it absolutely was not. WAY more SMN players post-rework than before. Now, maybe players are just masochists and love playing classes that they hate. OR maybe the rework was better than it seems from social media.

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Originally Posted by Equitable_Remedy

Assume facts not in evidence.

People pretend like SMN was the most popular class in the game before the rework, but it absolutely was not. WAY more SMN players post-rework than before. Now, maybe players are just masochists and love playing classes that they hate. OR maybe the rework was better than it seems from social media.

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It's because it's easy. That's it.
SMN players don't care about the job they play it because it's easy just like how dancer is the most popular Phys range, it's why warrior is the most popular tank. If SMN suddenly became hard and BLM became brain-dead people would go to BLM. A lot of people don't want to get good at the game and just want to play the story. This doesn't make the rework good it just makes it the noob job that people play when they want to play super casually.

All MMOs have classes like this and they're always the most popular class in the game, they are also normally really badly designed because they're designed to be played by people who don't even read tooltips.

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Originally Posted by Ramiee

It's because it's easy. That's it.
SMN players don't care about the job they play it because it's easy just like how dancer is the most popular Phys range, it's why warrior is the most popular tank. If SMN suddenly became hard and BLM became brain-dead people would go to BLM. A lot of people don't want to get good at the game and just want to play the story. This doesn't make the rework good it just makes it the noob job that people play when they want to play super casually.

All MMOs have classes like this and they're always the most popular class in the game, they are also normally really badly designed because they're designed to be played by people who don't even read tooltips.

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Which is fine if you introduce a new job to satisfy this. Not so much if you gut a job to do it.

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Originally Posted by Khryseis_Astra

This is my biggest disappointment… I like new SMN but I want the other 3 elemental primals as gem summons. If they separate all 6 into astral and umbral teams, even better. It feels weird getting another Demi when the rotation in-between hasn’t been changed.

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Honestly, they could have also done something cool with the summons, like Ramuh summons an arbiter which is basically the MCH turret that gives what I'll call "Judgement stacks" and then you get judgement volt as the long-cast nuke at the end that deals extra damage based on how many hits your arbiter gets off

Shiva's rotation basically consists of using bow, staff, and then sword and maybe some sort of long-cast AoE ice DoT that freezes trash mobs for 3-4s

Not sure what we could do with Leviathan, maybe it could basically be the no-cast time summon like Titan with the single or multi-target hit with an OGCD that you weave, so that it still feels coherent with the previous summons where you just use it when you have to move without having to worry about anything.

Ramuh would basically be Garuda, Shiva would be Ifrit, and then Leviathan would just be Titan with the first 2 having a gimmick and the 3rd being free use

To the topic of the thread, it should be obvious by now. The devs don't hate Summoner.

They don't care about Summoner in the first place. There is 0 passion in this job's design. It's been the most shallow flash additions without any care or concern about how the job functions since Stormblood. Endwalker is just the terminus of that design, all flash and no substance. No one there cares about this job.

In all honestly I'd prefer if someone actually hated SMN. At least then we'd have someone from the dev team with strong feeling for the job in one form.

It's kind of funny that people complain about SMN didn't get any new thing in practice other than a follow up Searing Light. But when you come to see the bigger picture, everybody across the board got similar things. One or two follow up attacks for plain damage - even BLM. You'd think they have this fancy new fire gauge and resource to manage until you realize that Flare Star is just a glorified follow up attack of Despair.

The issue though, is that this aspect becomes extra jarring for summoner, because they were more thirsty than everybody else for 'new toys', since they had already a duplicate tool in Phoenix working exactly like Bahamut.

Ideally in 8.0 changing old things (best case, not-hold-my-breath scenario), Solar Bahamut would become a direct upgrade from Demi Bahamut and they have to completely overhaul what you do with the Firebird Trance. Anything that isn't copy paste of Demi Bahamut!... They have 15 seconds to think about something, c'mon it can't be that hard.

My take on smn is to have 3 limited summoning "crystal", basically just a slight change from current summoner

So you still cast the big bad summon as usual (bahamut, phoenix), the change start after that, when you cast ifrit titan garuda

Instead of fixed 3 crystal to cummon ifrit titan and garuda, this time you have 3 summon crystal to summon whatevers summon you have in your disposal (level) this range from ifrit titan garuda leviathan ramuh etc. So you can summon ifrit 3 times, or garuda 2 times and ramuh once, and so on, basically the limit is 3 times (before you rotate back to bahamut and phoenix to generate another 3 crystal) you can summon whatever you want depend on the situation, it make more sense because we have explore a lot, see and fight against many primal, as a summoner our book should contain all the primal we have fought until now.

With many primal on our tools, the summon now change from the current one and offer more variety, for example ifrit spell now deal the highest damage but it come with cast time and only single target, you want aoe? Then summon ramuh, his lightning will chain all enemy and it come with dots, you want instant cast? Summon garuda then, you can cast spell while moving and even give you increase movement speed buff, and so on

So you are fighting boss? And he has no adds? Ifrit all the way then, your party is mobbing? Ramuh it is, your tank is sprinting and getting all the mobs? Garuda will make you fast and you can attack while moving too

I actually hate how summoner plays now and just want something more like wow warlock/hunter again, or like 11's
11 actually had well made pet classes put together, some weird but still functional, I came to play 14 with friends because they, completely unaware of the summoner rework told me it was going to be fun, instead I get a glorified caster who only plays like a "summoner" if you forget that summoner didnt become a proper character archetype in FF until 10, where summons were a separate entity from the summoner and it got later expanded in 11 and then espers in 12 worked much the same.

we shouldn't be playing with legos, we should be choosing summons based on what job is infront of us/
Ramuh could be something of a mini dancer, buffing an ally you choose and when you cast your abilities it, like lightning, fluctuates the damage buff for your ally, when you start to hit your lower dps spells, your ally deals more damage, when you deal your higher dps spells, they get less.

Shiva would be ideal for mobbing while also crowd controlling mods, meaning that you can pull her out if you dont need more aoe damage than you need your tank to survive a bit better/if you want to take pressure off your healer

Leviathan should be the one you swap to for support, shielding allies while still dealing respectable damage, or letting him and the closest ally have his thorns effect where when they are hit the enemy takes damage

Titan would raw tanking, a bit of aoe damage but with a taunt much like any other tank, however since he's just a summon hes not the best tank and would work best for coordinated take swapping either when needed to actually deal with a boss's mechanics or just to *again* give a way for you to take pressure off the healer or tank for a second

Ifrit should be pure single target dps, offering no utility just damage and only a smidge more than ramuh, so while ramuh could be better with certain party members or a coordinated partner but ifrit would always be a safe bet, give him maybe one or two AOEs but otherwise they're meant for taking a boss like ramuh.

Finally garuda should be focused on aoe damage, lingering damage and generally good at clearing up mobs, simple as.

All of this should be handled by an ability bar and mana resource that is tied to the pet itself so instead of the currently useless pet bar we have that does fucking nothing, we actually get a reason to fiddle with it.
and no more of the egi shit, we already call up these guys in their full form for the late game spells let us after 60 or something just have the full visual of a primal working for us.

Because I want anything other than a flashy caster that summons a turret which barely has enough braincells to be classified as a vegetable.
Summoner was such a raw disappointment that I main Scholar because atleast my pet actually interacts with me and my teammates Selene has become more of a party member than my Bard main friend who floor tanks all day.

Easy answer, summoner represents their incompetence at game design.

When the devs have to put increased enmity on a non-tank job's abilities to keep pace on enmity because the potencies are too low to do so in the first place... SMN is boring and repetitive to play and is unsatisfying. The effects are dull, and the damage numbers are not helping, DNC feels more fulfilling.

I'd love to see each summon be it's own moveset, drawing from the extreme trials. That'd break up the monotony of SMN gameplay.

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Originally Posted by Raikai

snip.

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People did notice it, and did voice their dissatisfaction at DT being "ShB 3.0". Downright laziness and creative bankruptcy, but we already kicked the "job design" can down the road to 8.0. Can't wait to see when they announce that job changes will be further delayed... probs for the same date where they build upon this version of SMN, that was meant to be a "foundation". Foundation of their apathy, maybe.

Here the solution for solar bahamut, crit direct hit on all his move. We all know its the easy fix.

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Originally Posted by Zarkovitch

Here the solution for solar bahamut, crit direct hit on all his move. We all know its the easy fix.

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And adjust the buttons to make you do something else. Maybe like old phoenix phase where you did 1-2 1-2 or something else. Make the demi-summons have slightly different inputs for the GCD spam.