After years of playing Summoner, I'm shelving the job and here's why.

[Angry_Evil]

The problem about SMNs is that historically, you've complained about every single **** thing.

Oh look it's "you complained too much" bs again.
People are complaining cause they're dissatisfied with how SMN work and worked. It is mostly legit complains too. And square were ignoring summoners for how long? You can't blame summoners for complaining about promises SE gave but broke.

1 - SMN feels like a DOT class! I want a real SMN! / SMN lost one dot in SB! I want my SMN dot class back!

I would understand if exact same people were complaining about that. But many different people are playing summoner and they like different things. You can't generalize and ridicule all summoners like that. Did SE even address this? It's their game and their job, what do they want? SMN to be DoT class or not?

2 - SMN pet designs are ugly! I want real summons with 5 minute cutscenes!

Pointless ridiculing again. It is a fact that egi designs are trash. Also it's pretty much a fact that egis are useless and clunky and acting like glorified auto attack most of the times.

3 - Sustain is useless! Make pets more resistant! Bring back sustain! I can't tank mobs in the open world!

And? How can you blame summoners for poor implementation of pets and their mechanics? How can you blame summoners for deleting sustain? And square didn't make pets more resistant after removing sustain. Like literally wtf are you even talking about and why? I barely used sustain or titan-egi and not care much about them. But I can't deny fact that many other summoners used them and removing of sustain does not make any sense at all. Square did not rly address any of that too.
I played smn through ARR and 3.0 and never complained on formus but all I see so far is neglecting on SE part and poor communication.

4 - Give us REAL SUMMONS! Bahamut blocks our view!

Pretty much not only summoners complained that bahamut blocks the view. I said that already but - if players want real summoner doesn't mean they want unreasonable thing that will interrupt their ability to do game mechanics. It boggles my mind that you're blaming playerbase for poor implementation by square AGAIN. Nobody at fault there but SE. It's their job to design and implement thing properly. Playerbase has no power over that.

5 - Give us some utility like RDM while we keep pretending contagion, devotion and radiant shield do not exist!

What the hell is this? What people are complaining about DPS that RDM is dealing while bringing more and better utility than smn. Nobody pretends that contagion, devotion or radiant shield don't exist. NOBODY. Why are you writing this false things? Ridiculous...

6 - SMN in 4.0 is too simple! We are ruin mages I'm getting bored make this harder SE! /SMN is too hard SE! There's too much difference between good SMNs and bad SMNs check fflogs!

This is wrong too. After reading new SMN skills for 4.0 people got an impression that summoner is braindead now with only ruin spam(which is not exactly wrong tbh). But when people actually played it they realized that smn is underpowered and actually hard to handle(also clunky af) and not rly fun to play(which everybody were concerned about from day 0)
Most complains about 4.0 smn are pretty legit too...

You've lost every single grain of credibility and you've only done this to yourselves.

Who the hell are you even talking to? Why generalize everybody like that? This attitude is troubling tbh. And pretty pointless...

[Zojha]

You've lost every single grain of credibility and you've only done this to yourselves.

Has it always been the same person making these demands or has the highly conflicting base design simply created a very diverse playerbase with many sub-factions that all prefer a different aspect of the job and consequently want "their" aspect to be promoted?

In the prior case, you make a point. In the latter case, you're being stupid here.

[Neela]

You've lost every single grain of credibility and you've only done this to yourselves.

The only ones who lost credibility are the ones who complain without knowing what the real problem with this cls is, the ones who left the ship because smn is no top-tier dps cls anymore and the ones who scream for pot buffs instead of taking a 2nd thought that a simple ruin pot buff won't change anything... so whats the point in "you only done this to yourselves" anyway?

[Gallus]

I'm not gonna go through every single person complaining about SMN and their absolutely ridiculous suggestions to "fix" the class.

But if you can't see a legion of people suggesting completely random stuff that goes nowhere like:

I wouldn't mind if classes like SCH and SMN CONSTANTLY had you repositioning your pets to maximize your efficiency.

You are either blind or don't want to see the truth.

I swear, at this point, I'm SE, and I have no idea either about what the hell you guys want.

All I hear are empty words such as "SMNs have lost their identity" or "don't feel like pet classes", like, what the hell does that even mean? Sounds like angry rambling to me.
Pretty sure not even the SMN playerbase are very certain of what they want.

[Angry_Evil]

I'm not gonna go through every single person complaining about SMN and their absolutely ridiculous suggestions to "fix" the class.

But if you can't see a legion of people suggesting completely random stuff that goes nowhere like:

I see them. But also I see a lot of people with good suggestions or description of SMN problems.
And no way in hell whining like that about "too much complains" will help anything.

[Angry_Evil]

I swear, at this point, I'm SE, and I have no idea either about what the **** you guys want.

I'm much more interested in what SE actually wants from SMN as a job. And what's their reasons behind changes.
It should barely matter what random people want lol. Also implying SE will read this crap instead of japanese forums lol

All I hear are empty words such as "SMNs have lost their identity" or "don't feel like pet classes", like, what the hell does that even mean? Sounds like angry rambling to me.
Pretty sure not even the SMN playerbase are very certain of what they want.

How do you think "smn playerbase" should reach a consensus lol? Your stupid complains about complains are not much better than random unreasonable suggestions about smn changes...
It's pretty clear to me that many smn players rerolled to other more desirable or fun classes. And it is pretty clear what many SMNs want - boost in a short run, things that are not so hard to change - like potency, aetherflow, sustein, devotion etc. But a serious rework in a long run like they did with brd. Reasons for all of that were described many times through several threads again and again.
And a MUCH MUCH bigger problem here is not that playerbase doesn't know what they want... But that SE have no idea what to do with summoner...
PS
About "identity" and "doesn't feel like pet classes". I dunno why it's not obvious for you? Are you even playing as summoner? Did you play any other FF games? One can write very lengthy posts about any of that tbh and I kinda don't want too. But in general I think the problem here is in the core design of SMN job, it was not satisfying from d1, it was called summoner which conflicted with what fans would consider a summoner etc. Basically square failed and that's where it got us today. Everybody rerolled to RDM lel

[Gallus]

Watch the other threads about people talking about job changes. DRGs were very concrete and specific about what made their class harder and inconvenient. They were given changes. MCHs voiced out their concerns too about the overheating mechanic. Specific suggestions were given too.
Now go ahead and read the massive rambling that are all these SMN complaint threads. A 1500 word essay full of straw and empty words.
If SMNs in general were more specific and went to the point more as to what they hell they wanted I'm sure SE would take them a bit more serious.
You guys are the only ones in here that keep mixing lore stuff with how SMN should play because historically SMNs have been this and that.
I agree pulling good damage with a SMN can be pretty challenging atm, but reading everyone's opinions makes it very clear very few people know why.

[PriyaJugulataris]

Magically enough, despite not appealing to you, OP's words/comments did resonate with a fair amount of people.

Acting like... SE takes the non JP crowd seriously (Or, that they would because of your perceived flaws regarding the community) is also a stretch

People who play a class can have varying complaints re: the class, "all members must have the same issues/agree with each other" is some absolute nonsense (and even within other classes this occurs, like there are people who like the MCH changes, say it didn't do enough, didn't address the core issues, or flat out don't like it and same with DRG)

There are plenty of varying specific suggestions from different summoner players across various threads.

There are people who think that the issues re:Summoner can be fixed within the current system, and there are people who think that perhaps a rollback/shift to how SMN is in PvP would aid the class, and there are people who think a complete rework is in order.

Truly, how amazing, that people can have varying thoughts /s

[Angry_Evil]

Watch the other threads about people talking about job changes. DRGs were very concrete and specific about what made their class harder and inconvenient. They were given changes. MCHs voiced out their concerns too about the overheating mechanic. Specific suggestions were given too.

It shows how convoluted and bad SMN job design actually is... It's silly to suggest that smn playerbase somehow is very different from every other job playerbase...
And like... How is it playerbase fault that SE ignoring and neglecting smn? They literally didn't address anything. For a long time...

If SMNs in general were more specific and went to the point more as to what they hell they wanted I'm sure SE would take them a bit more serious.

And what exactly is stopping you from creating more specific threads about smn instead of pointlessly whining?... I wonder.

You guys are the only ones in here that keep mixing lore stuff with how SMN should play because historically SMNs have been this and that.

Who are you talking to??? I'm not mixing anything with anything, I'm explaining the reasons behind SMN complains to you cause you seem to not be able to grasp them at all...

I agree pulling good damage with a SMN can be pretty challenging atm, but reading everyone's opinions makes it very clear very few people know why.

It's not our JOB to understand why or what makes job more challenging or design a freaking job... Believe it or not but there are actual game designers in square that work on this stuff and get money for it.
Frankly we don't even need to tell square anything, they should be able to deliver fun and competently design job by themselves. But they are failing at it again and again and not only with smn. Brd, mch, astr, sch, drg all suffered from this.

[Schondetta]

I appreciate you trying to keep it real but just ignore this player. I reported them for there rude posts the best we can do is ignore them and move on and carry the topic at hand.