Summoner likes and dislikes, an attempt to compilate thoughts on Summoner.

[Sequora]

I definitely agree with the original post. As a person who planned summoner since it was released, this is a bad place with a horrible game play feel. So bad that I leveled dnc a few days into doing ex primals.. I hope they fix it. Almost every summon I know has changed to rdm cause it’s super easy and does the same dmg

I couldn't agree more. I actually did MSQ on RDM because I always thought pulling a book out during the CSs looks stupid. I lvled SMN using roullettes and fates and got them to 80 at about the same time. I immediately switched to SMN and I've finally started to get the SMN rotation down, but it's still really busy. I've been doing the Ex fights, and they were initially really challenging on SMN. Even now, I feel like to perform well, I basically need to tunnel vision. I just tried doing Ex fights on RDM yesterday, and it felt like a joke. I'm not saying I want the rotation to feel as simplistic as the RDM rotation, but I feel like it needs some tweaks. I feel like progression fights will be difficult because it's going to be hard to meet DPS checks while tunnel visioning SMN rotation. It makes me sad.

[Taranok]

I couldn't agree more. I actually did MSQ on RDM because I always thought pulling a book out during the CSs looks stupid. I lvled SMN using roullettes and fates and got them to 80 at about the same time. I immediately switched to SMN and I've finally started to get the SMN rotation down, but it's still really busy. I've been doing the Ex fights, and they were initially really challenging on SMN. Even now, I feel like to perform well, I basically need to tunnel vision. I just tried doing Ex fights on RDM yesterday, and it felt like a joke. I'm not saying I want the rotation to feel as simplistic as the RDM rotation, but I feel like it needs some tweaks. I feel like progression fights will be difficult because it's going to be hard to meet DPS checks while tunnel visioning SMN rotation. It makes me sad.

Even after you get it down, it's still busy and lacks a real flow to it, which is a bigger problem than anything. I'm leveling Machinist right now and, despite the class being a hell of a lot busier, when played correctly it has a very real, solid flow to it. And the inclusion of flow makes a massive difference to how busy it feels. So it ends up feeling less busy than Summoner because it flows well, and is smooth.

Ninja, at least in HW and, to an extent, SB, also flowed well, so it never felt super busy despite literally being the highest APM class in the game. It helps that I treat a 4-step ninjutsu (from start to finish) as one action, but at the end of the day it just flows really nicely.

That's ultimately what SMN is lacking. Flow. Its AoE rotation flows about as well as a dog crashing through a screen door does, and the ST rotation flows about as well as 2 gears grinding their teeth off.

The flow is everything. When a class doesn't flow well, or the flow is artificially difficult for the sake of it (E.G. Hagakure), the flow gets choppy, rough, and difficult to follow. The more you have to improv, the worse a class feels, and SMN just feels like 'round the clock improv. Which is fine, if your class was designed around it, like Dancer (and old Machinist) were. But this one most definitely is not.

[Trensharo]

I couldn't agree more. I actually did MSQ on RDM because I always thought pulling a book out during the CSs looks stupid. I lvled SMN using roullettes and fates and got them to 80 at about the same time. I immediately switched to SMN and I've finally started to get the SMN rotation down, but it's still really busy. I've been doing the Ex fights, and they were initially really challenging on SMN. Even now, I feel like to perform well, I basically need to tunnel vision. I just tried doing Ex fights on RDM yesterday, and it felt like a joke. I'm not saying I want the rotation to feel as simplistic as the RDM rotation, but I feel like it needs some tweaks. I feel like progression fights will be difficult because it's going to be hard to meet DPS checks while tunnel visioning SMN rotation. It makes me sad.

The RDM rotation isn't really that "simplistic," though, it's just intuitive. There is still enough going on in there, and some decision making actually built into it - unlike SMN. IMO, BLM has a simpler rotation than RDM.

[Taranok]

The RDM rotation isn't really that "simplistic," though, it's just intuitive. There is still enough going on in there, and some decision making actually built into it - unlike SMN. IMO, BLM has a simpler rotation than RDM.

BLM has the simplest rotation of every class in the game, short of comparing it to the DPS rotation of a healer, which is just a bad faith argument. Even tanks are more complicated. All of its difficulty comes from trying to find a way to fit its rotation into a boss' encounter design, which is where it gets truly interesting. This is also what catapults BLM up to the hardest rotation in the game.

I describe RDM as a very simple job full of a ton of micro-decisions that, while individually meaningless, add up to be incredibly meaningful over the course of a fight. And yes, it's intuitive.

And Summoner is the old Feral Druid John Madden rotation, where you have a ton of micro-decisions, even one mistake anywhere will throw everything to madness, and the rotation is just utter chaos with no intuitive flow even when it's not going to hell in a hand basket.

And a 120sec Recast for a 15sec 5% damage buff is awful.

180 second recast. It's 3 minutes, not 2.

[Trensharo]

180 second recast. It's 3 minutes, not 2.

Getting tired of people not reading, but trying to "clap back" like they have been ordained by SE.

My mention of a 120 sec recast is a response to the proposed change in the post that I responded to.

Stop the idiocy.

Post directly above mine:

Devotion timer lowered to 120s recast.

No, I didn't quote it in my response, because I don't need to quote a post directly above mine. Get up to speed before the kneejerk...

WoW's "rotations" are more priority systems, and are a lot more intuitive than much of what's in FFXIV. The combat pacing is different. The encounter designs are different. The content design is different. It is not the same thing, and WoW isn't the only MMORPG that does or has ever existed. Stop using it to scapegoat SE's bad class design. Feral and Summoner aren't even remotely comparable classes - even if they were in the same game.

Additionally... Playing a melee class that has instant skill activation, no spell travel latency, basically doesn't suffer a movement penalty at all (just a ranged penalty, if mechanics force them out), doesn't have to deal with buggy/glitchy/non-responsive pets and pet hand-off mechanics (Egi Assaults, Enkindle, Devotion, etc.), and doesn't have to [constantly] weave 2-4 button presses in the span of one GCD feels completely different to play than a ranged "pet" caster - even if it has a lot of buttons to press. WoW also doesn't have oGCD spamming like FFXIV, and better ability queueing. The classes are not designed around set rotations that you can just put in a PDF file and tell everyone to "emulate" verbatim under almost all conditions. There isn't that much decision making here, beyond "what mechanics are coming up, and what raid buffs are going to be fired up soon." Some of the changes are actually designed to decrease the amount of decision making needed (i.e. making Miasma and Bio the same Duration, Aether changes, etc.).

Which is why I made the comment about SMN feeling like a melee with none of the benefits of a melee, but all of the detriments of a caster - in another thread.

WoW Demonology, after the LK revamp and in some later expansions, was considerably more complex than Affliction or [ESPECIALLY] Destruction - but it was NEVER this clunky. It had just as many buttons to press... There are just core differences in the combat systems that allow for openings for SE to misstep and end up with something that is far clunkier than intended (over and over again, apparently).

Conjuror and Necromancer in EverQuest 2 - both master classes in pet class design, IMHO - and never felt like this despite having TONS of things to do - more than FFXIV SMN... and the pets felt like absolute powerhouses (40-55% of damage, depending on class - more for Conji and less for Necro). And they still got Temp Pets (so Bahamut and Phoenix doesn't really feel much different, to me).

But if you're only played WoW and this, I can see how you can get some things confused. The market is a lot bigger than that, though, and SE had more than enough precedent to not mess this up... even back in 2013 - nevermind the middle of 2019.