I love where Summoner is at right now

[Spiriel_Basanda]

I, too, like SMN as it is right now. Admittedly I didn't play the job before ShB and I consider myself to be a MCH main, so I enjoy the rapid fire pace of the job as it is, and I'm not entirely sure of how it used to be. I picked it up cause I needed to for my static, and I don't really regret it.

[Nemekh]

The job is in an awkward place where those newer to the job especially coming from other higher apm jobs will be less familiar with the holes that are in the current design - especially the steps backwards that have been taken with regards to downtime and how much worse the job feels for optimisation with said downtime in mind, and as such will feel more positive about things until they start scratching away at the surface.

I encourage anyone newer to the job to watch the review I made for 5.0 release smn to appreciate the angles players like us are coming from, as well as any of the older threads my peers and I have made.

[Spiriel_Basanda]

I didn't mean to suggest that the job doesn't have issues. I'm not insensible to other people's problems with it, I've read a lot about it when I was trying to learn how to play the job, and I watched your video on it. The problems do make sense when explained properly. I'm by no means a 90%+ player, and for my level of playing the job the problems don't really seem to matter too much. Either that or I'm still just too inexperienced to fully grasp the implications of it all, which is quite possible. That's not to say that they shouldn't be fixed, they should. Trust me, I get it. I've mained MCH since HW and I survived SB MCH, that barely received changes it really needed to make the job functional while being banned from PF groups before getting said changes. I want you guys to get the changes you want before 6.0 hits. No job should suffer like SB MCH did.

I just have fun with how SMN is designed atm, that's all I meant. Nothing more, nothing less.

[Nemekh]

It wasn't aimed specifically at you but there's an interesting situation that manifests with where/why people like the job.

Initially, SMN can feel overwhelming and off-putting which alienates people wanting to dabble with it further and is a big factor as to why SMN sees less play in the more casual end of the game. But once that hump is overcome, it may seem alright and this is where the people saying it feels fine tend to be.

Beyond that as experience and familiarity with the design grows it leads to where veteran mains are disheartened with the disproportionate effort for the resultant damage and end up playing BLM or other jobs that just feel much better with how they execute and their output - which is again very apparent in the decline of SMN being played in the upper end of raiding. To quote a fellow Balance mentor of mine: "Spending all your brain power to have bad damage sucks."

When you have long term mains telling you they hate playing the job now and refuse to play it for the content they want to do, how they will also not play it in 24 mans, dungeons or anything else anymore? That makes me feel very sad.

I'm very sympathetic to the plight of Machinist as people like Lynn (Kit Fox here) can attest to, but in the context of SMN I remember the play rate decline prior to 4.1 like it was yesterday. It's not as bad, but the trends are appearing again. 5.1 is a very pivotal patch to the long term health of SMN and I truly hope Yoshida realises this.

[Taranok]

While I won't (entirely) disagree with some of your grievances regarding Egis, I will take issue with that part in bold.
Especially since it all comes back to the usual "summoners in previous FF games" argument, which has been repeated ad-nauseam.

How can they be "thematically bad" if they're *fully* integrated into this game's lore?
Not to mention that removing them would also upset those who actually do care about them (myself included).

Really, it'd be more sensible/realistic to adjust them rather than outright remove them...

Here's my opinion of lore to justify bad gameplay and thematic design.

By this logic, you would claim that a Black Mage is a Black Mage despite having the animations, weapon, etc of the warrior in the game just because the lore told you that that's what black mages do.

I'm sorry, but that doesn't fly with me. Summoners in FF are known to channel powerful entities. Hell, even in FFXIV's own lore, the lore to justify egis is talking about using the aether of dead primals to tap into that power and summon forth entities. In ARR and HW, this came in the form of egis as the only summons, and it never felt like a summoner despite the excuse.

Then SB comes along and we see actual summons in the form of Demi-Bahamut. Not quite the full primal, but definitely a powerful entity. While not ridiculously strong, it still thematically fit what a summoner should be while not breaking the balance of the game. But what it also did was that it took Egis and forced us to compare them directly against Demis.

And as much as you don't want to admit it, comparing Demis to Egis leaves the Egis wanting. They don't feel like summons so much as parlor tricks, and their forgettable nature, clunky UI, terrible damage in combination with their very weak thematic identity held together purely by the lore and nothing else, speaks volumes to how terrible egis actually are for the class.

To put it another way, how many machinists actually liked Rook and Bishop autoturrets, and how many of those same machinists hate the massively redesigned Machinist now that those piddly turrets were removed from the game as a core persistent mechanic? Machinist, as it is right now, is the best it has ever been. But they got rid of a core element of the class that didn't work that some players enjoyed, so obviously it was a bad change I guess.

I could even throw in abilities like Scourge and Power Slash, 2 really fun animations that are gone that I really liked from DRK. Even Delirium was more fun than Souleater. But the class right now plays the best it ever has, so it's not bad that they're gone, at all.

[Rika007]

I always really saw the Demi's as just the natural evolution of the egi's and wondered why the Dev's shoehorned them both into the same rotation. I always thought the eventual change would be to just make the egi's something you summoned every minute or so from pre level 60 or 50 in a set egi-rotation, and those would be upgraded into demi's in a set demi rotation. It's funny because exactly what happened to the Rook Auto-turret with MCH, they ditch it for the superior Queen at level 80. And it's like that on many other classes, we ditch clunky animations and upgrade to other more powerful spells on other jobs as they go up in level, yet with SMN, here we are trying to cram 4 separate expansions worth of gameplay into one job. Egi's are a relic of the past. Let them be something we only really have to deal with level 50 and below if they absolutely MUST still be tied to us, and then we grow up to the big girl summoners we all want to be.

[dinnertime]

Yeah SMN pretty much went the opposite direction with its design. It's not any more easy nor convenient than the last version.

The rework felt mostly unnecessary because it didn't accomplish anything but frustrate a lot of people into dropping the job. It only fixed minor things like Bane being free, but major things about the job like the rotation flow and flexibilty from Aetherflow, DoT application etc. they screwed over.

And yeah it's just strange why they're still keeping Egis around. It's disappointment after disappointment with each version release and it's so detached from everything else about the job now when all it is useful for is to gain Ruin IV because I guess we can't have Ruin II being useful at all. Remember back in Stormblood they STILL kept Ruin, the level 1 spell, as SMN's basic spell? That was just embarrassing but good thing they upgraded it into Ruin III in 4.1 after the criticism. They really need to rethink the Egi system over and it's been long overdue since it never works out right.

[Dyvid]

The job is in an awkward place where those newer to the job especially coming from other higher apm jobs will be less familiar with the holes that are in the current design - especially the steps backwards that have been taken with regards to downtime and how much worse the job feels for optimisation with said downtime in mind, and as such will feel more positive about things until they start scratching away at the surface.

I encourage anyone newer to the job to watch the review I made for 5.0 release smn to appreciate the angles players like us are coming from, as well as any of the older threads my peers and I have made.

The problem is and why this thread was created was main players who don't even play SMN have one hundred and one ideas on how to "fix it" but don't even understand the problems. Instead they want to remove everything about the job and rebuild it from the ground up in their own imagination. The job as is does have issues; Egi damage, timers not lining up, overabundance of OCD abilities, and just odd design between DWT and FBT. But the job isn't as broken like the Chicken Littles want to shout, but it does need adjustment in certain areas to making it play better. But it people only care about being the top DPS maybe SMN isn't the job for them because no matter what, every job can't be 1st place.

I always really saw the Demi's as just the natural evolution of the egi's and wondered why the Dev's shoehorned them both into the same rotation.

Demi's are temporary pets plan and simple. MCH Rook were like WoW totem but didn't work right so they dropped it in favor of another temp pet. Egi are important to the SMN job and shouldn't be removed because some people don't like it.

[Rika007]

Demi's are temporary pets plan and simple. MCH Rook were like WoW totem but didn't work right so they dropped it in favor of another temp pet. Egi are important to the SMN job and shouldn't be removed because some people don't like it.

Demi's are more then temporary pet's and to say they are that is belying their importance to the Summoner rotation. While in looks and flair they are similar to the MCH Queen, in importance and power they are as integral to the Summoner rotation as Drill and Hypercharge, while the Queen is just an extra source of damage. Egi's are really not important in anyway to the Summoner's rotation, and really hasn't been for the better part of three expansions now. Ever since Heavensward, Egi's have shifted into a far less central role, while Trance's and then Demi's became the shining star.

You're right, Egi's should not be removed just because some people don't like it. They should be removed because they are outdated, clunky, no longer the central focus of the job, or what get players hyped to play it.

[dinnertime]

I would've dropped SMN a long time ago if it weren't for Demi summons. Seriously, who says "I play SMN for the Egi"? Arguably, Demi summons feel impactful and more hands-on than ever Egi's were, especially with Phoenix the concept is looking better and can potentially expand more. Demi's being temporary is what allows them to be high in damage and grand in size, too. I liked how you have to gain Bahamut back in SB, it made it feel like an important part of the job. Meanwhile they still struggle in making Egi's look flattering in SMN's toolkit.