Alot of hate on new job iterations o.O

[NovaBismarck]

I will just quote an excellent summoner who usually leads up the rotations that we use as summoners and say that I agree: "Summoner is a buggy mess of a garbage job in 5.0 that takes a ridiculous amount of tedium to master. If that doesn’t sound like your idea of a good time, I recommend you wait a little bit to learn how to play Summoner." It's not in a great place and you can absolutely tell that by doing any kind of difficult content. The timing on the class and the flow is off. And the harder the content is, the harder you will work to sustain mediocre damage.

I have to call bs on that many people saying yes summoner is in a great place. I understand a handful of people are happy with it. However, not that many.

[Taranok]

I will just quote an excellent summoner who usually leads up the rotations that we use as summoners and say that I agree: "Summoner is a buggy mess of a garbage job in 5.0 that takes a ridiculous amount of tedium to master. If that doesn’t sound like your idea of a good time, I recommend you wait a little bit to learn how to play Summoner." It's not in a great place and you can absolutely tell that by doing any kind of difficult content. The timing on the class and the flow is off. And the harder the content is, the harder you will work to sustain mediocre damage.

I have to call bs on that many people saying yes summoner is in a great place. I understand a handful of people are happy with it. However, not that many.

As far as I can tell, the biggest problem I've seen are from summoners who are so good at the job that they basically don't understand what it's like to play the job in any way other than perfectly.

[Myon88]

As far as I can tell, the biggest problem I've seen are from summoners who are so good at the job that they basically don't understand what it's like to play the job in any way other than perfectly.

I'd be careful about framing it that way, because it gives the impression that good job design is a matter of subjective taste or something (it isn't). Or that it's okay to design a job around suboptimal gameplay, and veterans are just too set in their ways to appreciate shadowbringers summoner. The reality is that people good at this game (in whatever job) all understand the same few rules and axioms, and it feels good when the design of your job meshes well with these axioms. Some of these would be, for example,

1. Always keep your gcd rolling.
Gcds are unlimited sources of damage while cooldowns are not, so you'll maximize damage if you use them as much as possible and only use cooldowns when they don't interrupt gcds (hence, weaving ogcds between them). This is a big reason why whenever you have something that forces you to clip the gcd (like ninja mudras), people call it 'clunky' or unfun.

2. Powerful skills must be used as often as possible.
This seems obvious, because clearly you will maximize your damage if you use strong skills as much as possible. However it requires multitasking to keep track of these cooldowns in the heat of battle. An average player might forget to press them for a few seconds and not notice, they probably don't think they've made a big mistake anyway.

But good players notice. That's why combat downtime is a big concern when evaluating skills. For summoners, it is especially bitter because their abilities were downgraded in this aspect compared to stormblood. If a boss disappears or dungeon trash dies just before energy drain or phoenix comes off cooldown, you're penalized out of no fault of your own because you were unable to keep their cooldowns rolling - something you could do with aetherflow.

So yeah, you could deliberately triple weave or not use your cooldowns on time, but what purpose would that serve? They understand perfectly well, they just don't like it. This isn't really a matter of taste, it's an objective downgrade.

Since black mage is everyone's darling now, let me give a blm specific example of what they did to summoner:

Imagine if polyglot could not stack to 2, and worse, after it finishes its 30s charge, it does not continue to build toward the next charge - the gauge gets frozen and only restarts when you cast foul or xenoglossy. So, every 30s when polyglot finishes charging, you must use it immediately if you want the gauge to start again. If there's nothing to hit? Too bad. If you're in astral fire and can't spare the time? Too bad. No more double or triple fouls if you use them at just the right moment either.

Are you disgusted yet? Hey, I'm just an average black mage. Lining up a triple xenoglossy in trick attack is way too hard for me anyway. I just do my own thing without noticing what I'm missing, so I don't see anything wrong with this design.

[Kabooa]

Since black mage is everyone's darling now, let me give a blm specific example of what they did to summoner:[/B]

Imagine if polyglot could not stack to 2, and worse, after it finishes its 30s charge, it does not continue to build toward the next charge - the gauge gets frozen and only restarts when you cast foul or xenoglossy. So, every 30s when polyglot finishes charging, you must use it immediately if you want the gauge to start again. If there's nothing to hit? Too bad. If you're in astral fire and can't spare the time? Too bad. No more double or triple fouls if you use them at just the right moment either.

Are you disgusted yet? Hey, I'm just an average black mage. Lining up a triple xenoglossy in trick attack is way too hard for me anyway. I just do my own thing without noticing what I'm missing, so I don't see anything wrong with this design.

We'd get by. Always did.