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.

[Sylvain]

I agree with everything you said,

can we also properly see our pet damage? I don't even know how much my bahamut actually does. (same for DoTs btw), they're just small numbers popping around

[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.

[dinnertime]

Meanwhile many people complain BRD lost their cast bars.

In what universe? All I've seen about 4.0 Bard was positive feedback.
The 3.0 Wanderer's Minuet is complete alienation of what people liked about the job since 2.0. What they did was utterly wrong.

[Flana]

One thing I feel like I have to correct seeing some people mention it: there is no flow to SB Summoner.

There are only complete deadwalls.


You use Aetherflow and you're done. You use Trance, and are banned from using Aetherflow or Bahamut. Then you use Bahamut, which can use Aetherflow, but at a rate fast enough to go into Trance... except you can't. It's walled off. There is no flow between the phases of Summoner, only complete deadwalls that block your job from actually doing what it is supposed to. You want to use Aetherflow on cooldown. Aethertrail and Dreadwyrm Trance block you. You want to use Trance as soon as you can. You can't, Summon Bahamut blocks your third one every time. The job is nothing but a series of walls you stumble over.

This is terrible design. There is no excusing how awful a decision this was.

Compare to Dragoon, which is always building to their burst phase. You don't stop getting Eyes when you go into Life of the Dragon. You don't get blocked from using BotD for some reason just because you used Geirskogul. None of the mechanics hinder your job or its progression through mechanics. Black Mage has a rhythmic and steady progression through Ice and Fire phases. Red Mage smoothly translates between casting phases and melee finishers, and then back to ranged casting.

Summoner rams into walls, forever.

[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.

[Kreyd]

TL;DR all of the comments here, but i totally agree with the TE (also in his/her last Thread)

SMN was my main DD in ARR, cause I liked the DoT playstyle. I understand it's gone for SMN, but I hope it will come back for a future class.

It also became way better to play with the last Patch, but what I still dislike about SMN is, that it doesn't actually feel like a Summoner, rather than a Ruinmage with an uncontrollable Pet and DoT's, that are just leftovers of the last two Expansion.
I also can't see, where this class will be going with the next Expansion. Add another Burstphase after Bahamut Summon? Add more OGCD's?


IMO SE should redesign the SMN and make it more like oldschool Summoners from FFI to FFIX.
Casting a Summon-> Summon appears and does a specific attack->Summon desapperas.
They could bring in the six Elements Wheel as Job Gauge, gaining elemental Aether from Summons, giving access to other Summonings (finally Shiva, Ramuh and Levi <3) and then spend all the Aether collected into one big Summon (Bahamut, Phoenix, Alexander).
Imagine it like keeping Balance between the six Elements, like RDM do with white/black Mana and using all the restored Energy into one big attack, like SAM's Iajutsu.

Just my two cents and ideas about this class.

[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.