Dusting off the Tome: Summoner Feedback for 4.1

[Ariomi]

SMN is viable, strong, and many people are either happy or adapting top the change, I don't get it then.

I read right around 28 different threads since stormblood released, complaining about the Summoner changes. Did you ever browse through those? I have a good idea why people aren't happy.

Summoner being weak was one of those complaints. But that wasn't all of it. The new clunky playstyle, the focus on spamming ruin spells and moving away from the Dot oriented play style. The frustrating unresponsive pet. Summoner losing one of the largest portions of it's toolkit. (Ruin 1, Sustain for awhile, Miasma 2, Lost the ability to apply both Bio 2 and Bio 1 simultaneously, Spur, etc)


When a new expansion comes out, do you really want your main class to be scorned and hated like Summoner was? Having it's smooth playstyle, replaced with a gated system that inhibits you?.

People found the Ruin spam boring. Out of Summoner's GCD's what are your options? Ruin 2/4 or Ruin 3.
Demi Bahamut also works completely opposite of every mechanic Summoner has ever had and is complete opposite of Bahamut Trance.
While other classes like Dragoon, got Life of the dragon, which had the same mechanics of Blood of the Dragon but Empowered.

Now, half of summoner was fixed. It does enough damage, to pull it's own weight, does nothing to fix play style. Bahamut no longer inhibits the party, and is no longer selfish with it's mana. Every person complaining about it's play style is completely valid when so much of it was torn down.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...entity-Problem
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...and-here-s-why
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-and-neglected
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t....-Also-Sustain

Here's a few of them if you want to read.

[zuzu-bq]

When a new expansion comes out, do you really want your main class to be scorned and hated like Summoner was?

Uh yes, I main Black Mage. And yes I browsed those threads, most complain of non issues and people simply not enjoying the new turn they did on SMN. Many jobs get playstyle shifts each of the expansions we have had so far. If anything they'll only do big changes again next expansion.

[Ariomi]

Uh yes, I main Black Mage. And yes I browsed those threads, most complain of non issues and people simply not enjoying the new turn they did on SMN. Many jobs get playstyle shifts each of the expansions we have had so far. If anything they'll only do big changes again next expansion.

And if they do it right, like they did with Bard, there won't be 30+ threads complaining what's wrong with it.

[zuzu-bq]

And if they do it right, like they did with Bard, there won't be 30+ threads complaining what's wrong with it.

Meanwhile many people complain BRD lost their cast bars. Its a no win situation where the "right" is appease the majority of people crying on forums even if they have no reason at all.

[Karshan]

Its a no win situation where the "right" is appease the majority of people crying on forums even if they have no reason at all.

No reason ? You like a job for three years, they change it, you don't like anymore, and there is no problem with that ? What is wrong with you ? Is it expected of us to say to Square "ok slap me in the face, I like it rough" ?

Flana said it all. There is a wheel of successive phases, but not a flow as in "correct your mistakes midflight". in HS you forgot Rouse for 8 seconds, use it now, no problem just lost 8 seconds. Here ? well too bad it's Bahamut time, wait 28 seconds.

Once again, no problem on a dummy, in an actual fight, with downtimes sometimes 15 seconds that completely mess up the wheel ? Man better buckle up and know the fight by heart to be of any use to your team.

Not saying other classes don't have problems as well, and I think of BLM too for you guys. But that doesn't mean SMN is fixed now.

[Ariomi]

Meanwhile many people complain BRD lost their cast bars. Its a no win situation where the "right" is appease the majority of people crying on forums even if they have no reason at all.

I would like to see one thread saying they miss Bard cast bars. I looked through about 30 pages of the english forums. I could not find a single Topic saying "Pls give cast bars back"

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...oving-Bard-now

I found threads discussing it, but not a single post of people wanting casts bars and losing their mobility.

[zuzu-bq]

About the "not feeling like Summoner" people keep saying since ARR. I got it, but now you actually have a temporary big summon to do mid fight. Wasn't that the most required Summon-like aspect? Just actually trying to understand it here. I also felt SMN wasn't very Summonery previosuly but I just accepted it as how it worked to implement it on the game. Kind of like how Red Mage isn't exectly the iconic hybrid job. I think people would feel a lot more the Summoner feel if they finally implemented the ever promissed never delivered Egi glamours "every patch after Stormblood" heh. As for the dot-job, they kind of had already been dethroned on that by BRD, but I understand how people feel about the loss on dot management aspect. If anything, this loss made the job a bit less easy to understand going from 0 because the whole game used to be "never clip dots" and now you can use dot clipping for gains. But I also think a new player might not have as many issues as we have with these stuff, we mostly have them because we been following the game for a while and adapting some times can take a while.

I found threads discussing it, but not a single post of people wanting casts bars and losing their mobility.

Anyone that fails to see BRD had close to free mobility on HW can't ever understand why cast bars weren't bad. While I do agree no cast bars feels better to play, cast bars were not a bad design by themselves. And like I said, the "right" is appeasing this majority that like without cast bars so yeah SE was right on removing them. But oh sorry I forgot it's a taboo to have a slightly unpopular opinion here. While most feedback on OF of Bard have been about being glad on the loss of cast bars, people in other medias and in game do miss it, but most of them are ok with it and don't think its worth to complain about it. Its like what Kumi said about adapting even to aspects you didn't like that much.

[Ariomi]

Anyone that fails to see BRD had close to free mobility on HW can't ever understand why cast bars weren't bad. While I do agree no cast bars feels better to play, cast bars were not a bad design by themselves. And like I said, the "right" is appeasing this majority that like without cast bars so yeah SE was right on removing them. But oh sorry I forgot it's a taboo to have a slightly unpopular opinion here. While most feedback on OF of Bard have been about being glad on the loss of cast bars, people in other medias and in game do miss it, but most of them are ok with it and don't think its worth to complain about it. Its like what Kumi said about adapting even to aspects you didn't like that much.

There's one problem with your logic here. Bard never started out as a class with hotbars. From 0-50 Castbars weren't a thing that existed. And when Heavensward happened, the gameplay change was such drastically different, that it caused an uproar. The class that everyone had until 50 became fundamentally different. And not everyone knew about using Feint for mobility. Eventually Square Fenix fixed this, by removing cast bars from Machinist and Bard.

This can also be said exactly in the same case for Summoner. Suddenly Summoner only has 2 dots instead of 4, and the balance between dots and normal spells have become completely one sided. And while summoning Bahamut is thematically better, they still could have kept Summoner more inline to what people enjoyed. Having Demi Bahamut function similarly to Dreadwyrm trance, and keeping the rest of the class relatively the same would have had people much happier then the iteration we have now.