The whole Summoner "has been re-worked" is sad

[Lemuria]

the forum threads at this moment in time at 99% negative about Summoner changes, whereas in game I see alot of happy Summoners.
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like a Triple DoT applicator and adding direct damage skills - that will diversify the current SMN tool kit, while keeping it embedded in lore.

A few problems here, and I'm sorry to pick your post apart like this, but it's an important distinction.

First up, in-game there are a far higher percentage of black mages than there are summoners. This is not a coincidence. It's a more rewarding job, with instant gratification from each nuke rather than the dwindling HP of our DoTs. Ruin has never and will never hit the high numbers. It's the equivalent of a White Mage Cleric using Stone spells, only weaker. We simply use it as filler while our DoT's are up. We lack the real damage needed on killing adds fast, since everything is done to the same tick.

Our pets do one third of our damage, and of them only Garuda has the highest DPS potential thanks to it directly boosting our own DoT skills. However, even then all it does is double the duration, so all it does in reality is free us up to spam more Ruin spells.

What exactly did we get which revolutionizes how we play? We get a skill which applies DoTs which we already have (albeit instantly), so basically a 'shortcut'. And a single 'nuke' which requires stacks of a new buff to even utilize. Unless this nuke is Flare level damage, which I highly doubt, this is a bit of a letdown.

Now, here's what they SHOULD have done. Add a new skill called Modus Veritas. Fans of XI will know where I'm coming from already, the rest of you can read on. This skill should DOUBLE the damage of existing DoT on the target and HALVE the remaining duration. So we can speed up kills by dealing our DoT in half the time. Then, allow this new DoT to be passed along via Bane and voila. A true-to-status-quo skill that people can get behind.

But what everyone has wanted from the start, the only thing we've all wanted, is to have a summoning job where we actually do some summoning. Egi's with unique skills that we can swap out at will so they can all contribute to a battle instead of a singular summon we keep for the entire run. People who claim it cannot be balanced simply don't understand how. It can be done, and it can be done easily.

So, while you might be all hyped up for the update and the single new skill we're getting (because really, Bahamut is the only reason anyone's remotely excited) at least understand where some of us are coming from and why we're utterly disappointed at the update. It adds very little new to the class and practically flips us the bird with regards to new summons in the future.

[FelixWindwright]

snip.

No problem Lemuria, as you might have seen in my last reply I have some sympathy with those who are not happy - and in my posts ive attempted to be as understanding to peoples anger towards the job as I can being someone who actually is fine with how the changes are going forwards into 3.0.

I would agree that the BLM popularity as you said is down to being more rewarding and i agree the current SMN in 2.X is lactlustre in comparison causing many to jump ship - it isn't ideal and SE have clearly put work into making SMN better as a class perhaps not better in a "traditional" summoner way (I'm not a dev so I cannot comment on what they have / havent tried). I didn't use the term revolutionize more from the fact I dont think it will first and foremost, but I did state from what we've seen so far they've attempted to rework skills to compliment the foundations we already have, whether they are optimal for peoples perceptions or not.

I guess in summary I'm trying to say that they've tried and we don't know everything and I understand people will be upset, but there are a fair few of us who are happy with these changes, which isn't always voiced on forums when people give feedback.

So I'm going to just leave it here in terms of replying to avoid it just turning into a back and forth between Happy vs UnHappy just wanted to put a differing perspective in comparison to the overall outcry from it, which I can understand as some people have differing ideas of what a summoner is.